Personal Persuasion

Telemarketing

Sales people calling you at home, their telemarketing scripts, and how to end the conversation quickly.

Many people hate being called at their homes, like at dinner time, by telemarketers. It is a pretty aggresive way of marketing products, a sales person calling you at your home.

Mostly call centers are hired by other companies wanting to sell something over the phone. These call centers train their people to effectively persuade people to buy stuff. They call people using a list of phone numbers, and it's often a computer that actually selects the number and makes the call.

Telemarketing scripts

When you are called by a telemarketer to convince you to buy something, the telemarketer steers the conversation according to a script. The person calling you works with a computer, and has the turns that the conversation can take all marked up in the script. The things to say, the questions to ask, answers to your questions, and ways to overcome your objections, it is all scripted. There's nothing spontaneous about telemarketing.

These scripts are designed to "create interest" in you for a product, and to eventually have you take an "action" like making an appointment or buying a product. But first they'll try to lower your defenses by "establishing trust," and, most importantly, to make the telemarketer in charge of the conversation, so that you can be steered to where they want you. The telemarketer is guided by the script to create an image of being trustworthy and sincere, with opening sentences that are designed for that.

Even if you don't want to talk to the telemarketer, their call script contains ways to draw you into a conversation anyway. Before you know it, you are discussing their product and your choices with them, even if you never felt like doing that. Unless you stop it.

Why would you want this?

Why would you want to engage in such a conversation?

It is not that you are respected really, they do want to persuade you, and have everything that they can controlled.

If you are actually interested in such a product, you can also Google it on the internet for information, or check out Epinions.com, or another review site, instead of having yourself being manipulated on the phone. That also leaves you the freedom to buy at another company, as why would you want to give a company an advantage just because they approach you? Isn't it better that you have the initiative? It also leaves you the freedom to buy a product at another time, not just when someone has succeeded in persuading you to.

It is good to keep in mind that the telemarketer is calling you, and depends on you doing something. Naturally, you are the one calling the shots in such a situation. However, they'll try to have you take on a role that is in effect submissive, where you give up the advantage of that position.

Getting rid of telemarketers

First of all, it is important to find out that you're being called by a telemarketer. In order to lower your defenses, they'll try not making it obvious that they are one. But you'll suspect it soon enough, so you can outright ask them what their intentions are. If they dodge that question, you can be certain they don't like answering it for a reason, and that it's better to get rid of them sooner rather than later. Usually, you'll get some kind of mini sales pitch to the question about their intentions, that you might want to cut short.

Telemarketers have all kinds of tricks to extend the conversation when you try to end it. If you say you're not interested, they'll ask you why you're not interested. Well, you're not interested because you're not interested, and there is no reason for you to explain or even justify that. But if you, like most people, don't want to be rude, you'll start explaining why you're not interested, and thereby give the telemarketer the opportunity to draw you into a conversation.

When you justify why you're not interested, the telemarketer will go into your objections, and present counter arguments to them. When you stay nice, and don't tell the reason you really want to end the conversation, you'll eventually feel like you "should" want the telemarketers product, but you don't really feel like it. Therefore, it's a good idea to just be honest when you don't want to be bothered by them, or to even don't bother saying anything at all and hang up the phone.

In order to entice you into a conversation, they may say it'll only take a few minutes. When they bother to tell you that it will be only a few minutes, you can be certain that they do that for a reason, usually that they really want a quarter of an hour of your time. But by the time you realize that, they'll have already hooked you.

While telemarketers want to discuss your choices with you, it is, of course, not so that you have some kind of obligation to discuss these with telemarketers. And why would you? They may have information about the product they want to sell, but they do want to persuade you, and will not give you objective information.

Stopping them from calling you again

It is a good idea to always tell telemarketers that they can't call you again, and should take you off any call lists.

If in your country there's a central "do not call list," it is good to have your phone number listed there. In the United States there is the National Do Not Call Registry for this.